AMD has taken the one thing Intel’s Arrow Lake CPUs have going for them, and slapped that right out of Intel’s hands.

After a flurry of reviews yesterday, AMD Ryzen 7's 9800X3D is now available for anyone who wants to build the ultimate gaming system. The final nail has been driven into the coffin of Intel’s brand new Arrow Lake processor generation, stealing the only thing that it had left, namely gaming efficiency.

Intel must be looking at its CPU market with a sombre face right now, because its once unassailable advantage in gaming performance is now completely gone. Intel's latest processors, codenamed Arrow Lake and made almost exclusively by TSMC, have only just arrived, putting all their efforts into low-power and efficient running.

Unfortunately, this has been at the cost of almost everything. Intel Core Ultra 9 and its Efficient cores may be able to handle heavy multithreaded workloads and deliver impressive benchmark results, but they are often far behind their previous generations when it comes time to play games.

They've been incredibly efficient and, therefore, very cool-running.

It was a small consolation to the Intel faithful (whatever is left), after generations of CPUs which relied almost exclusively upon higher clock speeds and increasing power consumption in order to achieve its performance numbers.

AMD is saying "Hold your pint" as it launches the Ryzen 7 X9800X3D, which has the highest gaming frame rate of any CPU tested of this generation and the lowest gaming power consumption.

Baldur's Gate 3 is our latest CPU benchmarking suite. It's a great benchmark for gaming temperatures and efficiency. It scales well with different processors, and can highlight the highs and lows of a chip. In that test, Ryzen 7 9800X3D delivered nearly 50% more gaming frame rates along with lower temperatures and power draws.

Intel's last offering to gamers was a mini-beast CPU with a small form factor. Even that is gone now thanks to the new 3D V-Cache chips. What is next for Intel? I would guess that Intel will go back to the CPU schematics board.